Fighting for social and
environmental justice for the working-class people of ZIP code
80216

SHE SAYS

"We have this
stupid — absolutely stupid — notion that someone has to
win and someone has to lose. Until we all win, the environment
loses."

In the northeast corner of Denver, in the dingy
underbelly of the I-70 overpass, roughly 10,000 working-class
residents — 83 percent of them Latino — live alongside
two diesel trucking stations, two oil refineries, a battery plant,
and the monstrous Purina dog-food factory.

It is by no
means a beautiful neighborhood, but for Lorraine Granado, it has
been home for most of her life. Four generations of her family live
here, and she wants to create a healthier life for her three sons
and grandchildren. "Look at all these wonderful opportunities to
make it better," Granado says. "To make it
better."

Granado, 57, is the founder
and executive director of the Cross Community Coalition, a
nonprofit organization that works for social and environmental
justice in "ZIP code 80216" — Denver’s northeast
neighborhoods. Because of a toxic combination of racial and
economic prejudice, she says, industry and government officials pay
scant attention to the health of this community. Granado has
dedicated herself to changing that, and in the process founded and
nurtured an array of vibrant community groups.

In 1994,
Granado and other citizens filed a class-action lawsuit against the
Globeville Asarco metals-smelting plant, a Superfund site just
minutes west of Granado’s home. Nearby residents had endured
more than a century of lead, arsenic trioxide and cadmium
production, which had contaminated their air and soil.

After countless hours of legal negotiations and an ambitious public
education effort, Granado and her group were victorious. In the
largest environmental settlement ever awarded in Colorado at the
time, Asarco spent more than $28 million on yard cleanups,
reimbursements for decreased property values, and medical
monitoring for Globeville residents.

Granado and her
allies defended northeast Denver in an especially dramatic fashion
seven years ago, when a leaky railroad tanker that was transporting
hydrochloric acid for Vulcan Chemicals released a huge plume of
deadly gas over the neighborhood.

Vulcan, which operates
a terminal in northeast Denver, did not alert the community to the
spill, nor did it provide information on the dangers of the gas,
Granado says. Schools let out their students as usual without
mentioning the problem, she adds, and firefighters didn’t
arrive on the scene until five hours had passed. Fortunately, no
one was killed or injured.

Granado spearheaded a
mediation effort between a citizens’ group and Vulcan, and
the company eventually offered a settlement that was even larger
than they’d hoped: $200,000 for a new neighborhood park.

Most recently, Granado helped agitate for the cleanup of
the Vasquez Boulevard/I-70 Superfund site, an area saturated with
the residue of a century of lead and arsenic smelting. Due in part
to the efforts of local citizens, the Environmental Protection
Agency decided in 2003 to remove and replace the soil from
approximately 850 individual properties in northeast Denver, and to
test for lead poisoning in every resident child under the age of
six.

"She was just a workhorse, and unwilling to give
up," says area resident Anthony Thomas. "She’ll help us with
whatever we need. Lorraine has always been there."

For
her part, Granado says the 80216 community has supported her at
every turn. "It’s always because there are other people of
good faith and good will," she says. "I hope — I hope, I
hope, I hope — that when I look back, I can say I contributed
some by healing, teaching, creating awareness."

With the
noise of the interstate just outside her window, in an office
surrounded by a steady stream of brown Purina smog and flanked by a
Muffler Extreme auto-body shop, she smiles, and says, "Sometimes I
look at my life and think, how blessed am I?"

The author writes from Boulder, Colorado, where she is
pursuing a master’s degree in environmental journalism at the
University of Colorado.